Flash Back Message -
The Jesus Principle: What Is Truth?
John 18: 37 Jesus answered,
“…This is why I was born and came into the world: to tell people the truth. And everyone who belongs to the truth listens to me.”
Like so many do even in this age, Pilate shrugged off Jesus’ comments about truth with a timeless rhetorical question “what is truth?” and the truth is what he truly sought was a resolution to his problems through the art of diplomatic parley. He failed. Pilate supposedly wants to know what the truth “is” and as we see with Pilate and have seen even in this recent age, our leader’s find it very easy to be subjective with the definition of “is”.
Therein lies the problem, truth cannot remain true and at the same time be subject to our relative situations, not and remain objective (universal) that is. Jesus instead tells us what truth “isn’t” as he explains that his kingdom is not of this world that truth is not of this world. The truth of it is that “the truth” is objectively opposed to this world or at least opposed to how the world tends to sees things as true. To illustrate this, more than seventy-five times throughout the four gospels Jesus uses the phases, “Truly truly, I tell you" Or “I tell you the truth”. More often than not his truth is juxtaposing our understanding of things with God’s worldview. So when we ask ourselves to ask ourselves, “What Would Jesus Do?” the simple answer is, Jesus would tell the truth! And apparently the world would prefer the art of diplomatic parley with God instead.
I heard a story of a young boy who wasn’t raised in a church family. One day his friends at school and he were talking about things and their conversation got around to the subject of mini bikes. The young boy talked about how badly he wanted a mini-bike and how he didn’t think his family could ever afford one so he was convinced he’d never get to have one. One of his friends piped up and said that he should go to church and pray for God to get him one. The young boy thought long and hard about this and determined that he’d give it a try, but he wasn’t sure how one goes about praying to God for those kinds of things.
So, he decided to visit a local church that next Sunday and see what he could find out. The boy sat in the back and observed the worship services that day and listened particularly to how the folks there were praying for their various concerns. This particular congregation was the “high church” sort and so he came away with a great deal of very important and lofty sounding words he could use to please God in prayer. Excited he ran right home, into his room and closed the door and he began to pray:
“Glorious Lord of the heavens and earth whose magnificent majesty reigns supreme throughout all the universe, grant that this day your unworthy and humble servant might enjoy the consolations that would come from riding his new mini bike, all for the glory of your infinite purposes, amen.”
When he woke up the next morning, he ran about the place excited to find his gift from God. To his disappointment there was no mini bike to be found. He thought to himself, “Maybe these things take time, I’m sure God’s working on it.”
As the week progressed the young boy became very concerned that the new bike hadn’t shown up yet, so he decided to try another church and a different prayer. That Sunday he joined one of his friends at their church and was very inspired as he watched the people claiming their victory through words of faith and naming their desires in their prayers with such confidence and excitement convinced that Jesus would honor their positive confessions of faith and grant them their desires. So again, he ran right home and into his room and onto his knees and he confessed his confident words of faith that Jesus Christ should give him his new mini bike.
Again, the week wore on and no mini bike. Absolutely dismayed the young boy couldn’t imagine what he’d done wrong. About that time his uncle who was visiting noticed him looking absolutely dismayed and asked him what his major malfunction was. The young boy explained his dilemma and his uncle tried to cheer him up saying, “from what I hear, God is a loving and forgiving God and I’m sure if you feel like you deserve that new mini bike he’ll find a way for you to have it, even if you aren’t good all the time, you’re mostly good most of the time.” The boy thought about what his uncle said long and hard and decided that he knew what he needed to do.
So, the boy stole a ring from his mother’s jewelry box and traded it at the pawn shop for a used mini bike he’d been eyeballing for some time now. He rode his new bike home and ran into his room and fell onto his knees and prayed to God for forgiveness. Well, as you might imagine his mother found out, after all the mini bike was a dead give-away, and so, she grounded him for a month and made him return the mini-bike and get her ring back and apologize to the pawn shop owner for all his foolishness.
The young boy was very angry for getting caught and for being grounded for so long, but he was even angrier at God for not answering his many prayers. When the punishment ended, he decided to try one more thing. He went to the local Roman Catholic Church when no one was around, and he snuck into the sanctuary. The boy found a statue of the Virgin Mary there and so he took it. He carried it to his room and hid it in his closet. Then he again fell to his knees and began to pray:
“Dear Jesus, if you ever hope to see your mother again, you’d better give me a new mini bike, thank you very much, amen.”
Okay, I know, it’s a silly story maybe even irreverent, please forgive me. But I really do have a point in all this silliness. If someone who has never heard the good news about Jesus and all his “truth” were to follow us around and watch us, knowing nothing at all about Christianity, and if it’s true that every relationship with Christ is relative to each disciples own situations, what would our particular version of Christianity reflect to that observer?
How can each individual disciple reflect the truth without contradicting one another at the same time? In the world’s worldview of truth all points of view are valid, even if it is filled with deception. In Jesus’ point of view, he is telling us that truth is not deception, cannot be self-contradicting, and comes to us from beyond our situations, beyond this world.
In 2 Chronicles Chapter 20, Jehoshaphat learns that the answer to “what is truth” is that “the battle is not yours, but God’s” (2Chronicles 20:15).
In Luke 18:17 Jesus tells us something like that when he tells us that we learn about the truth if we accept the truth as if we were a child, not through our learning, not through miracles and not according to man’s understanding of glory. Like a child we should seek God’s kingdom of truth, his light, his knowledge and his glory as it is reflected in the face of Jesus Christ if we hope to truly know what truth is.
“For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2Corinthians 4:6).
What is Truth?
Jesus said: “I tell you the truth…”
“I give life to those who want it. What you do for others you do for me. And what you don’t do for others you don’t do for me. You will cry, but your sadness will become joy. Whoever believes in me will not be judged guilty, but you must be born from water and Spirit. You will see heaven open and angels from God coming and going upon my throne when you accept my kingdom as if you were a child. My kingdom is not of this world. The messenger is not greater than the one who sent him. My Father will honor anyone who serves me. My Father is giving you the true bread from heaven. Whoever serves me must follow me. Then my servant will be with me everywhere I am. The person who does not enter the kingdom through me but climbs through some other way is a thief and a robber. The person who enters through me will be saved. If you know these things you will be blessed if you do them.” (source: Everywhere Throughout All The Gospels)
The takeaway from all this is that Jesus said he came to tell us the truth. It’s all the truth we’re ever going to need. Can you accept it even when his truth is at cross purposes with your own?
Truly I tell you, God bless you and keep you in Christ Jesus, amen.